


Loganimity

by Factoids



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-06 10:42:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4218675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Factoids/pseuds/Factoids
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sansa decides it might be better if the songs remember her as a monster than a princess.</p><p>LOGANIMITY, n. The disposition to endure injury with meek forbearance while maturing a plan of revenge.</p><p>Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loganimity

Tommen asks her of the North one day, of the Wall and giants and Others, while she sits with a kitten in her lap and Sansa obliges. She has already told him almost all the tales she knows of heroes and great deeds and damsels. She tells him Old Nan’s tales of long nights and white walkers and wargs.

“Filling my nephew’s head with tales of grumkins and snarks, my lady?” Lord Tyrion laughs as he finds Tommen staring with a look of awe as she recounts the ancient tales.

She ducks her head, rising smoothly and curtsying. “He tired of knights and ladies, my lord Hand.” He does not spare her another glance and she sweeps away, recognising the dismissal.

Tommen and his kittens are her only reprieve, save her walks in the godswood. She has no escape from Joffrey, truly, because even there he will order his men to fetch her if he feels inclined.

She considers hiding in the hollow walls that she has found but daren’t explore for fear of those who have already found them. She never stays long or strays far but she hears of Theon and Winterfell before they tell her.

She thinks of Bran and Rickon as she whispers tales of wolves to Tommen and his kittens.

She tells him the stories of her own family that used to so embarrass her and thinks to herself that they were all much safer before southron lords forgot where the wildness in Stark blood came from, when north married north and ladies in silk gowns muttered behind hands of magic and skinchanging.

She heard disgruntled whispers on the Kingsroad, when she walked with Lady through camp, or when Arya and Nymeria startled the horses. She heard low murmurs of her brother as she walked the halls now, of how he could turn into a wolf at will, of how he captured the Kingslayer with sharp claws and vicious teeth.

 

“Your brother refuses to trade for you, little dove. My brother would have torn the world apart to take me back and yours would rather keep his hostages.” 

She doesn’t say “Mayhap if I had fucked Robb he would be burning the city to the ground now.” 

She doesn’t say “Your brother could have saved you, he chose to watch you waste away, to stand outside your door as your king raped you.” 

She says “I am glad, my queen. I would not wish to leave his grace, the king.” Because a ladies courtesies are her armour and Sansa has need of hers even if Cersei does not.

 “Of course not, little dove, and you never will. Not until you die.”

 She refuses to feel the betrayal she knows Cersei meant her to feel as she is left alone once again. At first she thinks to herself that the queen would have no way of knowing, it is more likely spite and bitterness than truth. In the end it doesn’t matter. She will not be angry with Robb because he should not trade her for the Kingslayer. Trading for her would not make her safe, it would not make any of them safe. Only winning the war could do that. Only making sure that no one dares follow them back beyond the Neck. Robb is King and his part is to lead.

 Sansa will do her part.

 

There are whispers in the rose gardens of her brother marrying, of breaking oaths and words are wind, even Stark words.

She smiles, because Robb has married for love and the North has a queen and the Starks live on. Sansa waits and plans and she will do her duty to her King and Queen and she will be remembered in songs and stories that sweet little girls will frown at because Sansa Stark has been dead longer than any of them have known.

Robb, she knows, is still planning to save her. The north is his but it’s powers are too far south and they cannot return home and allow the southern crown to keep the King’s sister hostage. Cersei’s bitter words as they sat in a hall full of terrified women as Stannis’ fleet burned are etched in her mind. Sansa’s life is forfeit and no matter if Robb storms the Red Keep with the might of all the seven kingdoms at his back he will only find her body.

There are no heroes and Robb must be disabused of the notion that he can fight his way to her.

She must turn him home.

 

The royal wedding is almost upon them and Lady Lannister is forgotten as she walks with quiet steps though the keep and to the stables and the kennels and ever through the godswood. Every eye is on the new Queen while the cast aside Stark stares at walls and windows and balconies that used to be hers but are now Lord Tywin’s, that could have been hers, but will now be Margery Tyrell’s.

She does not stray into the hollow walls because there are spies in the keep far more practiced than she is and she does not fool herself that they have forgotten her as easily as the lords and ladies of the court but she watches and gathers what she needs and she ignores Shae when she asks what is so fascinating about the cracks in the tower of the hand and the vicious chomping of hunting hounds being fed bloody remains of animal carcases.

 

 The bells start tolling before dawn and all the court are shuffled into gawk, uncomprehending, as the new-old hand of the new, uncrowned, king announces that the King, the Queen Regent, and the King’s Hand, have all been found dead.

 Varys looks directly at her for just a single heartbeat and Sansa takes momentary pride that she has shocked even the master of whispers. She does not think she has fooled him and she prays that this is a secret he keeps, at least long enough for the seeds of doubt to take root.

 When Tyrion returns to their solar she sits quietly as he paces and rants. His words are not meant for her. Silly little birds are not asked for opinions on matters such as these.

 “I don’t understand. The guards saw nothing pass them. No one heard a sound. They were attacked in their own beds, savaged, by some invisible beast. Who could do this?” There is a fleeting moment where she thinks she might have played her hand so well she may yet survive. It isn’t possible of course, and she will not let it happen in any case.

 Her plan is not to kill her tormentors and escape. Her plan is, and has to be, to become a whispered tale of northern monsters. She will die, with her the last hold the Lannisters have on the Northern hosts, and no one will dare touch Robb’s children. She looks up from her embroidery, a snarling grey direwolf, with a practiced, sweet, smile at his back as he pours another goblet of wine. “Grumkins, my lord, or perhaps snarks.” She sees the color drain from his face as he turns to look at her.

 

 Only Tommen seems to feel any real grief (convincing as they are, Margery’s tears are certainly false), and for him Sansa feels remorse. Cruel and vindictive as they were, it was still his family she killed, and now he has only his uncles (uncle and father, father had said), and his sister far away in Dorne and all the stories his sweet northern companion had weaved him of wolves trapped in human guise. He does not look fearful or shocked or even accusatory when he sees her, he simply looks knowing and she meets his gaze steadily.

 

 They do not keep her in one of the black cells, but she is allowed to speak to no one and her guards follow her so closely she can feel the heat from them, even when she goes to the godswood. No one ever comes close enough for her to overhear their murmurs but she sees the suspicion in their eyes and revels in it. She smiles to herself when she sees the guards at her elbows shift nervously as she whispers sweet nothings in the ear of a stray cat and watches it scurry away. The next day her guards steer her resolutely around, giving any living thing a wide berth and they never touch her more than is absolutely necessary.

 They do not believe the tales of mysterious beasts.

 They do not entirely disbelieve them.

 It is while she sits at what they call her trial, as absurd as it is, that her heart shatters. Nothing her judges or their so called witnesses say is of much interest to her, but there is a shout from the crowd and then a chant and the masses are asking for the execution of the last wolf, to put her down like her monstrous brother. 

  _Like her brother._

 For the first time she allows herself to think and her stomach rebels as the nauseating smell of blood comes back to her with the sound of a hunting hound’s jaws tearing through the soft flesh of Lannister throats, stilled by sweetsleep and beading with red where her dagger scratched for the dog to scent.

 The high lords who are supposed to ascertain her guilt pay the crowd little heed and the accused even less. “Are you suggesting, my lord Lannister, that your lady wife turned herself into a wolf -I’m sorry- and invisible wolf, and entered the chambers of the King, the Queen Regent, and the Hand, ripped out their throats with her brand new teeth, all in one night before returning to her own bed without ever being noticed, even by yourself?” Prince Oberyn mocks and everyone laughs. They sound like Robb and Theon used to, after Old Nan’s tales and Sansa smirks because Robb would hold her just as tightly as she held him when the rustling of leaves became the wheezing breath of the Others.

 “Of course not.” 

  _Shut up, Theon, of course I don’t believe._

Sansa smiles and for the first time she feels betrayed because _she held up her end_.


End file.
